Good morning,
The work week in Whitewater begins with partly cloudy skies and a high of thirty-eight. Sunrise is 6:55 AM and sunset 4:26 PM, for 9h 30m 25s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 48.7% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s library board meets this evening at 6:30 PM, and the area school board meets in regular session at 7 PM.
Worth reading in full —
Sapna Maheshwari describes How Fake News Goes Viral: A Case Study: “Eric Tucker, a 35-year-old co-founder of a marketing company in Austin, Tex., had just about 40 Twitter followers. But his recent tweet about paid protesters being bused to demonstrations against President-elect Donald J. Trump fueled a nationwide conspiracy theory — one that Mr. Trump joined in promoting. Mr. Tucker’s post was shared at least 16,000 times on Twitter and more than 350,000 times on Facebook. The problem is that Mr. Tucker got it wrong. There were no such buses packed with paid protesters….While some fake news is produced purposefully by teenagers in the Balkans or entrepreneurs in the United States seeking to make money from advertising, false information can also arise from misinformed social media posts by regular people that are seized on and spread through a hyperpartisan blogosphere. Here, The New York Times deconstructs how Mr. Tucker’s now-deleted declaration on Twitter the night after the election turned into a fake-news phenomenon. It is an example of how, in an ever-connected world where speed often takes precedence over truth, an observation by a private citizen can quickly become a talking point, even as it is being proved false.”
Bob McGinn watches as the Packers’ season careens out of control: “The Packers drooped to 4-6 with their fifth defeat in the last six games. They’re two games behind Detroit and Minnesota in the NFC North and in a four-way tie for 11th place in the NFC. Of the 16 teams in the conference, the Packers find themselves ahead of only Chicago (2-8) and San Francisco (1-9). Yes, their situation is that bad. “Six losses puts your ass against the wall,” coach Mike McCarthy said. “Disappointing. Reality is we are 4-6. We understand clearly what is in front of us. ”This is no time for personnel evaluation or coaching evaluation. This is our football team, the 2016 Green Bay Packers. We are going to rally and stick together.” It’s the Packers’ worst position after 10 games since McCarthy’s first season, when a 4-6 record turned into 8-8.”
Simon Nixon finds that The EU’s New Bomb Is Ticking in the Netherlands: “….the risk to the EU comes from a new generation of Dutch euroskeptics who are less divisive and concerned about immigration but more focused on questions of sovereignty—and utterly committed to the destruction of the EU. Its leading figures areThierry Baudet and Jan Roos, who have close links to British euroskeptics. They have already scored one significant success: In 2015, they persuaded the Dutch parliament to adopt a law that requires the government to hold a referendum on any law if 300,000 citizens request it. They then took advantage of this law at the first opportunity to secure a vote that rejected the EU’s proposed trade and economic pact with Ukraine, which Brussels saw as a vital step in supporting a strategically important neighbor. This referendum law is a potential bomb under the EU, as both Dutch politicians and Brussels officials are well aware. Mr. Baudet believes he now has the means to block any steps the EU might seek to take to deepen European integration or stabilize the eurozone if they require Dutch legislation. This could potentially include aid to troubled Southern European countries such as Greece and Italy, rendering the eurozone unworkable.”
Matt O’Brien ponders Donald Trump and the end of history: “From Europe’s anti-immigrant parties edging closer to power to Britain’s all-but-winning it with the country’s vote to leave the European Union to Trump’s ascension to the White House, Francis Fukuyama’s famous idea that free-market liberal democracy had vanquished all its ideological foes and was the “final form of human government” seems to be, well, a little more temporary. Just as he could have told you himself. Fukuyama, you see, believed that just because we’d reached the end of history didn’t mean we’d stay in the end of history. That peace and prosperity might not be enough for some people who would, “struggle for the sake of struggle” simply “out of a certain boredom” from living in a world that doesn’t seem to have meaning or identity any more. And so we might see a 227 year-old republic succumb to someone who evinced only the slightest respect for constitutional norms and even less for minority groups.”
Le Croisic is beautiful by air as a video from that city’s tourism bureau proudly demonstrates: